Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

‘Come to Life,’ I tell Grisha. ‘It’s not safe here.’

‘ Life ,’ Grisha repeats mockingly.

‘Everyone’s down there.’

‘Dance while you can, little shadow,’ he says softly, returning to his equations. ‘Dance in the light.’

AgroBOT staff are the only customers in Life Bar; the semi-darkness and sticky floor seem a better fit for us in our degraded state than Transaction House.

‘Claude, Claude …’ Liam English, far drunker than their short time in the pub would seem to allow, half-stands to greet me. ‘ Asseyez-vous , Claude. What’ll you have?’ Pulling a wad of notes from his pocket, he stumbles off without waiting for an answer.

‘Check it out, Claude.’ Jocelyn Lockhart points at the plasma screen on the wall. ‘Miles has been taken in for questioning.’

The screen shows the silver-haired head of Royal Irish jauntily strolling into a police station, where, the newsreader informs us sonorously, he will be questioned for up to thirty-six hours.

‘New minister making his presence felt,’ Dave Davison comments.

‘Bollocks,’ Joe Peston says. ‘Miles is sat in there watching Home and Away while the coppers bring him fish and chips. It’s all just a show for the little people.’

‘I can’t believe that that fucking clip joint is still trading and we’re going under,’ Gary McCrum says darkly.

‘Maybe Porter should have moved the HQ to Ireland,’ Jocelyn says.

‘Fuck Porter.’

‘Here, Claude, have you seen Howie?’ Ish asks me. ‘There were some people in here looking for him.’

I shake my head, ask what’s happening with Barclays.

‘ Nada ,’ Gary says. ‘They’re still in talks. I’m not holding my breath.’

‘I heard Porter’s not even there,’ Dave says. ‘It’s that little guy again. The co-global head of whatever.’

‘I’ll say this for Porter, he’s a cool customer.’ Jocelyn sighs, topping up his beer. ‘His bank goes down the tubes and he doesn’t break a sweat? I mean, he must have a ton of preferred stock, right? What’s that going to cost him? And still he’s nowhere to be found.’

At this, Ish starts; then she sinks slowly back into her chair, her expression somewhere between perplexity and horror, as if she’s struggling with some demonic conundrum whose solution leads straight to the charnel house. On the TV over her head, the news cycles on: a car burning in a street in Oran, the new Irish finance minister announcing four new jobs at a toilet-brush factory, floods in Bangladesh, in Prague, in Cork, the AgroBOT press conference again, with the caption Death: look at the upside .

The sun begins to set. More bodies appear in the doorway’s pocket of golden dusk and, with the same half-ironical, half-hopeless smile, make their way over to our table. Traders, analysts, salesmen, back office: people I’ve never spoken to, people whose names I don’t even know. The eschatological atmosphere, the sense that beyond our little ring of survivors — illuminated now by candles the barman has set down on the grouped tables — darkness prevails, brings to mind those medieval books in which a small band of travellers, fleeing plague or disaster, take refuge in a waystation and pass the night exchanging tales.

‘Remember the time the fire alarm went off, and then when we went back inside, it went off again?’

‘Remember that intern Howie kept giving extra accounts to? And he took all that meth, and tried to jump out the window?’

‘Remember the time the fire alarm went off?’ says Torquil Quinn, just arrived, taking off his scarf. ‘And then when we went back inside, it went off again?’ He is surprised by the muted reception this gets.

‘Well, lookit,’ Dave Davison sums up, ‘whatever happens, we can’t complain. We’ve had a good run of it.’

‘AgroBOT is a great bank,’ Liam English concurs emotionally, prodding the table with his index finger so the glasses shake. ‘A great bloody bank. And if it goes down because we had the guts to take a chance and do things counterintuitively, there’s no shame in that.’ Then, noticing through his whiskey fog that this hasn’t had the galvanizing effect he intended, ‘Though it won’t go down,’ he adds.

‘I’ve been thinking about moving on anyway,’ Joe Peston says. ‘Maybe it’s time to give something back.’

Heads nod, and the conversation turns to restoring old boats, teaching underprivileged children, other long-cherished dreams whose hour may at last have come. Then Liam English’s phone rings. Instantly silence falls across the table. Liam makes a show of indifference, looking at the number, appearing to think it over. ‘Rachael,’ he says, picking it up at last. ‘Yeah … okay … right … okay, grand. I will, yes. Okay.’

He puts the phone down, lifts his glass, sips, gasps with satisfaction. Finally he becomes aware of the many eyes staring at him. ‘So Barclays have passed,’ he says.

There is an audible, collective gasp, followed by a long, wintry nothing.

‘So that’s it,’ Jocelyn Lockhart says bitterly.

‘I just bought a Jaguar!’ Brent Kelleher moans. ‘Now I’m going to be one of those people who go around the supermarket checking which is the cheapest muesli?’

‘There could still be a buyout,’ Terry Fosco pleads. ‘Like, by someone else.’

‘Who’s going to be dumb enough to buy eight billion dollars’ worth of radioactive Greek shit?’

On the TV screen over the bar, the new Minister for Finance, toilet brush in his hand, perorates soundlessly from a podium. Around our table, too, silence reigns. No one mentions the underprivileged or boat restoration.

‘Fuck it!’ Dave Davison exclaims. ‘We can’t spend our last fucking night sitting round feeling sorry for ourselves!’

‘You’re right!’ Gary McCrum joins in. ‘We’re AgroBOT! If we’re going to go down, we should do it in style!’

‘VD’s?’

‘Let’s roll!’

In the blink of an eye, we are in our coats, the prospect of one last blowout on expenses lending us superhuman speed. I catch Ish’s eye; she shrugs, not wanting to go home any more than I do, and gathers up her belongings.

Gary waves his hand superfluously at a long line of static cabs and topples into the one at the top; Ish and I pile into the back seat of the next one, Kevin into the front. ‘Follow that car,’ he says, pointing. The driver, African, heavy-set, regards me questioningly in the mirror, but doesn’t speak.

As soon as we’re off, Ish grips my arm, leans into me and says in a low, urgent voice, ‘Something about this isn’t right.’

‘Eh?’

‘Think about it — if we didn’t know we were carrying all this Greek debt, how did anyone else find out?’

‘Eh?’ I say again.

‘The rumours, where did they come from? Someone spread this story around to drive down our share price. But if Danforth had parcelled up the Greek debt and hidden it so cleverly that even our own due diligence didn’t spot it, who could that have been?’

Alcohol sloshes around my brain, and weariness, and grief, all of them crying out against yet more abstraction. But Ish is insistent. ‘It would have to be someone who knew what Danforth had done, right?’

‘Such as who?’

‘Such as, for instance, Danforth’s former CEO.’

This wakes me up. ‘What are you saying? Porter started the rumours?’

‘Doesn’t it make sense? He knows Agron’s unwittingly carrying a ton of toxic securities. He buys them out for fuck all and sends our share price through the roof. Then he puts it about that we’re carrying the debt. The whole deal is set up for one colossal short.’

‘That would be insider trading.’